February 2022 King County school levies are passing, except for one Riverview levy

Ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2022 spe­cial elec­tion results are in here in Wash­ing­ton State’s most pop­u­lous coun­ty, and they look good for schools and essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices almost across the board, with only a cou­ple of exceptions.

Although par­tic­i­pa­tion is low, most of the mea­sures on the bal­lot do not have min­i­mum turnout or three-fifths affir­ma­tive vote require­ment because they are school levies. The thresh­old for pas­sage is just a sim­ple major­i­ty of those present and vot­ing. And with only one excep­tion, every levy is clear­ing that bar.

Twen­ty-sev­en propo­si­tions were on the bal­lot: twen­ty-six levy mea­sures and one bond mea­sure, in the mul­ti-coun­ty Northshore School District.

Of the levy mea­sures, the only one that is not pass­ing is Riverview Propo­si­tion 1, the replace­ment edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams and oper­a­tions levy. How­ev­er, Riverview’s oth­er propo­si­tion, a replace­ment Tech­nol­o­gy and cap­i­tal projects levy, is passing.

The returns on the Riverview mea­sures are as follows:

Riverview School Dis­trict No. 407
Bal­lots Count­ed: 4,199
Reg­is­tered Vot­ers: 15,647
Turnout: 26.84%

Propo­si­tion No. 1
Yes: 2,043 votes (48.70%)
No: 2,152 votes (51.30%)

Propo­si­tion No. 2
Yes: 2,177 votes (51.92%)
No: 2,016 votes (48.08%)

Propo­si­tion 1 is only down by one hun­dred and nine votes, so there’s a chance it could still pass if late bal­lots cast by dis­trict vot­ers are pro-education.

And con­verse­ly, some of the levies that are ahead are bare­ly so and the out­comes could change. Fed­er­al Way, for exam­ple, has a levy that is only pass­ing by two votes: Propo­si­tion 2 has 6,773 votes for and 6,771 votes against. That one could ulti­mate­ly go either way. Enum­claw has a levy that’s pass­ing with 51.40% of the vote, and Kent has one that’s pass­ing with 51.83%.

The King Coun­ty por­tion of the Fife School Dis­trict is actu­al­ly vot­ing down its two levies, but since most of the dis­trict is in Pierce Coun­ty, and the larg­er Pierce por­tion is in favor of the levies, they’re win­ning. The mul­ti-coun­ty results for Propo­si­tion #1 are here and those for Propo­si­tion #2 are here.

Levies in oth­er dis­tricts were pass­ing with two-to-one and three-to-one mar­gins. In Seat­tle, over three-fifths of vot­ers were sup­port­ing their local levies. Mer­cer Island has 70%+ sup­port for its levies. Belle­vue has three-fifths sup­port for its levies, while Lake Wash­ing­ton’s levies are get­ting sup­port in the mid-fifties.

Mean­while, Northshore has a bond mea­sure that needs a six­ty per­cent affir­ma­tive vote and forty per­cent min­i­mum turnout to pass. That mea­sure is just short of the six­ty per­cent thresh­old in mul­ti-coun­ty results right now. It would need to climb above 60% yes to have a chance. We’ll see if that hap­pens in the late ballots.

The min­i­mum turnout require­ment is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly tied to the turnout in the last gen­er­al elec­tion, which hap­pened to be the third worst turnout in state his­to­ry, so the dis­trict ought to be able to clear the min­i­mum turnout requirement.

Northshore School Dis­trict No. 417
Mul­ti-coun­ty results

Propo­si­tion #2
Yes: 12,048 votes (59.93%)
No: 8,057 (40.07%)

The King por­tion of Northshore is pro­vid­ing the req­ui­site three-fifths sup­port, but the Sno­homish por­tion is lag­ging, with only 58.61% vot­ing Approved.

Count­ing is set to con­tin­ue until Feb­ru­ary 18th, when the results of the spe­cial elec­tion will be cer­ti­fied. There will be eight more tab­u­la­tions after this.

NPI thanks every vot­er who took the time to par­tic­i­pate in this spe­cial elec­tion Our fur­ther thanks to every­one who joined us in vot­ing yes for our schools.